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richrenn 's review for:

Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree
5.0
adventurous funny hopeful lighthearted reflective fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
 
Brigands & Breadknives takes up a couple years after Legends & Lattes, but this time the protagonist is Fern, the rattkin bookseller we met in the prequel novel, Bookshops & Bonedust. 

Fern has sold up and decided to move to the city to open a new bookshop beside her old friend Viv, the Orc who gave up a life of mercenary marauding to open a coffee shop. She is hoping that a little of Viv’s act of reinvention will rub off on her, but things don’t quite go according to plan. 

Unusually for a cozy novel (or any commercial story structured by a writer shaped by the western creative-writing-industrial-complex -- and MFA-holding or not, aren't we all?) Fern doesn’t have a simple want that drives the plot: she has a massive but undefined need, a desperate ache for a renewed sense of purpose, an unfocused desire for reinvention that she can’t articulate. At the macro level, Fern is undergoing a mid-life crisis, something we don’t often see approached sensitively or even addressed in fantasy fiction. 

The story takes place more than two decades after we last saw Fern in Bookshops & Bonedust, and Fern is looking for her second act. She thinks moving to a new city and setting up a new bookshop beside her old friend will fill the void of meaning in her life. Viv and Tandri seem to think that introducing her to their rattkin baker, Thimble, might cause romantic sparks to fly and Fern might then find the same happiness that they have. But, instead she gets drunk, takes an ill-advised night-time wander through the still-unfamiliar city, and finds herself many miles from civilization and in the company of a famous elf warrior, her mischievous chaos-goblin prisoner, and a talking sword. 

A series of trials and tribulations follow as Fern comes to care for her new friends and discover that despite the cold, the damp, and the pretty constant risk of death or dismemberment, she rather enjoys life on the road! 

It’s an interesting departure from the cozy fantasy template of characters taking pleasure in pursuing a relatively mundane dream in the face of bureaucratic and/or emotional hurdles. It’s hard to convey cozy vibes when your characters are cold, wet, or wounded, miles from any semblance of home, and unsure of who to trust, but somehow Travis Baldree manages it (from time to time, anyway). Perhaps this book should more-accurately be labeled plain old fantasy, if labels are required at all? 

Unlike the western (character-driven) tradition, this is more of a picaresque adventure, where our heroes meet a series of colorful adversaries and conquer various challenges. It is perhaps a more ambitious novel than typically found in traditional fantasy; concerned with self-actualization as much or more so than sword fights — although there are plenty of those! That the novel still barrels along at a fast pace and entertains wildly is a testament to the author’s light touch and sense-of-humor. 

It’s an interesting turn for cozy fantasy to take. A lot of the appeal of cozy fantasy has been the low-stakes escapism; readers seem to be attracted to tales of self-determination and reinvention — something that seems to be very much on people’s mind over the last few years. Author’s like Sarah Beth Durst have charmed us with characters reinventing their lives in the face of chaotic revolution and instability; Travis Baldree initially focused on an individual radically changing their situation, daring to do more than dream of a better life; and Rebecca Thorne followed that impulse to take the story of individuals pursuing their dream one step further, to using that dream to change society itself. Brigands & Breadknives explores the despair that people face, the ache felt when they realize the life they lead, despite its physical comfort, is not fulfilling, but without a clear sense of what they should be pursuing instead. In other hands this would be a downer of a story, but Baldree, with his empathy, compassion, and ability to evoke wonder, turns Fern’s dark night of the soul into a warm tale of found family, adventure, and expanded horizons.